ABSTRACT
Hippodamus’ reputation as the father of town planning rests on his advocacy of a simple orthogonal grid for the street pattern of towns, with careful placing of principal public buildings and spaces to provide for markets, meeting places, temples, theatres, gymnasia, and civic halls. He believed the city should reflect the social order and through its form promote social cohesion. He re-planned his home town of Miletus, in Ionia, on these principles, winning such renown that he was employed by Pericles to plan the new Athenian port of Piraeus. He and his followers designed Greek colonies around the Mediterranean. Hippodamus was by no means the first to apply the grid idea to town planning, but he developed it in such a way that the ‘Miletian grid’ became very influential across the Greek and then the Roman world (Figure 3.1).
